On Monday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed charges against Laino Group for soliciting U.S. investors to trade in futures on commodities including Ether, Litecoin and Bitcoin without registering with the commission. Per the CFTC's complaint the St. Vincent-registered Laino Group, doing business as PaxForex, used a network of U.S.-based affiliates to solicit American retail investors. In doing so, Laino Group violated the Commodity Exchange Act. The CFTC did not specify the extent of Laino Group's activities. The commission's request for relief indeed suggest that they themselves don't know how much the trading platform took in without registering. In addition …
Two major crypto bills were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. One aims to establish which cryptocurrencies are securities. The other looks to put regulation of exchanges in the hands of the country's commodities regulator. The securities bill The Securities Clarity Act, from the office of Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN) establishes a new distinction in securities law between an investment contract and the "an asset sold pursuant to an investment 22 contract, whether tangible or intangible (including an 23 asset in digital form)." The new bill is basically a direct response to recent controversy over the Simple …
You could argue that the crypto industry should be crowdsourcing Blockstack’s legal expenses. Blockstack’s trailblazing work with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the initial coin offering (ICO) for its native Stacks (STX) tokens made headlines in mid-2019. On Monday, Cointelegraph reported on Blockstack’s legal analysis that said that upon the launch of its 2.0 network next month, Stacks will be sufficiently decentralized to leave the status of a security. Blockstack itself will be rebranding to Hiro Systems to further encourage the independence of Stacks tokens. To explain a complicated topic quickly, the concept of a “security” in investment is …
As Cointelegraph reported two weeks ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission put out a rare no-action letter in defense of IMVU’s new blockchain-based VCOIN. VCOIN is only the third digital token to get such legal protection from the U.S. securities regulator, which makes it an exciting development. The SEC has been extremely active in punishing initial coin offerings that it views as unregistered securities offerings, but it has been more reluctant to define what does not count as a security — a problem that Commissioner Hester Peirce noted just last night. A no-action letter is, however, not the same as …
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has released its Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) budget request, seeking $365 million. This marks a 9.9% increase over the previous year and 20% over FY2021. The commission regulates the country’s derivatives market and has been increasingly active in recent years in policing financial products that incorporate cryptocurrencies. According to the agency’s request document, the CTFC focuses on digital asset custodian risk, ensuring secure storage, as well as on accounting. The agency has its own staff of certified public due to the lack of guidance on digital asset accounting from sectoral oversight bodies. …